Just one question this week, but it’s an important one. As always, you can submit questions for the mailbag by using the form on the right.

Kreider

Tyler asks: Do you think Kreider’s next contract will be close to Gustav Nyquist deal? I’d say those two are pretty close comparables.

That’s a difficult question to answer at the moment, since this season will play a large role in the contract Chris Kreider receives. This year, Kreider has a cap hit of $2.475 million, but is getting $2.6 million in salary. That means his qualifying offer will be $2.6 million. Nyquist’s new deal is four years at a $4.75 million cap hit.

Nyquist will turn 26 when the season starts, so his new contract buys two RFA years and two UFA years. Kreider will turn 25 in April 2016, so his new contract will also buy two RFA years, with any remaining term buying UFA years. Remember that unrestricted free agency is determined by the age of the player in June of the offseason, so Nyquist’s late birthday actually hurts him here.

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Happy Friday, BSB faithful. I hope your summer is treating you well. Personally, I’m happy that summer is the busiest time for me at work, because those dog days between the start of free agency and the beginning of training camp are just brutal from a sports perspective. All the interesting moves have mostly been completed and we count down the days until hockey returns. One cannot live on baseball alone. Here are some thoughts as we slog through the summer…. Read More→

While several Rangers prospects have received much greater attention over the past season or so, Steven Fogarty has flown a little under the radar despite making solid progress at Notre Dame. One of the main reasons Fogarty went the college (and Notre Dame) route was to concentrate on his play away from the puck and Fogarty looks like a player that can play all three zones. He’s become a strong defensive player.

Fogarty is a big boy at 6’3 and 200+ lbs and the Rangers have been able to leave him to develop at his own pace which means four full years at the college level. Fogarty will play one more year of college but the big two-way center has intriguing potential at the pro level and has appeared to make good progress throughout his college career. Fogarty wears the ‘C’ in Notre Dame and the level of responsibility bestowed on Fogarty will stand him in good stead as he approaches professional hockey.

In news that pretty much surprised everyone, Lou Lamoriello has resigned as President of the New Jersey Devils, and has joined the Toronto Maple Leafs as their General Manager. Lamoriello stepped down as Devils GM this summer, paving the way for Ray Shero to take over that role. Toronto had been without a GM all summer, with Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter performing most of the work.

My guess is that Lamoriello will be serving as a mentor for Dubas and Hunter until they are ready to take over the role full time. They’ve both done a great job with free agency and the draft, so I doubt Lamoriello messes with that.

Offense: The Penguins finally decided that inserting random wingers alongside Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin might not be the best recipe for success and flipped their salary allocation from the blueline to the flanks. In doing so, they brought in five-time 30-goal scorer Phil Kessel, who could challenge for the Rocket Richard Trophy next season. They also acquired the talented Russian Plotnikov, who figures to get an early chance alongside Malkin. Though this might sometimes be the perception of the Penguins’ forward group, it will be far from the case in 2015-2016. A top-nine including Crosby, Malkin, Kessel, Plotnikov, Patric Hornqvist, Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz, David Perron and Brandon Sutter will be very difficult to match. Read More→

As expected, the New York Rangers have been relatively quiet this off season due to their cap situation. One NHL transaction that they made that can be seen as prominent is the signing of left wing Viktor Stalberg. At first, some people may have been confused over why the Rangers signed a player who played some games in the AHL to a $1.1 million contract, or why the Rangers signed him when they have young guys like Ryan Bourque and Oscar Lindberg still competing for an NHL spot. But the more I look at this the more it seems like an efficient signing by the New York Rangers.

For those who do not follow me on Twitter, I am currently working on a project that can allow fans and maybe NHL employees alike to view a player at any contract and see if he is worth it in the light of numerous stats. However, instead of talking about just millions we will be talking about cap percentage (cap%).

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The Edmonton Oilers have announced that they will raise a banner at Rexall Place to honour current Rangers President and now former Rangers general manager Glen Sather. Sather was, of course, the architect behind the Oilers dynasty in the 80’s.

The ceremony will take place on Dec. 11 before the game the same night against the Rangers. Sather coached the Oilers to four Stanley Cup championships. Sather has obviously been a polarizing figure for Rangers fans but no one can deny the impact he had on the Oilers so the banner raising is certainly well deserved.

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The Rangers appear to be done for the summer, with just Derek Stepan the lone remaining checkbox on new GM Jeff Gorton’s list of to-dos. But there are always little moves that can be done to improve the roster, and one of those moves could be bringing in free agent winger Alex Semin on the cheap.

Semin was just bought out of the last three years of his deal in Carolina, a deal that paid him $7 million a year. The buyout will pay him $2.3 million until 2021. Due to this, folks are assuming Semin may be more willing to accept a one-year deal for under $2 million. While this may or may not be true, there is no denying that Semin’s talent at that cost could be a steal.

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A common thread among sports fans is that they’ve had a role in all of our lives, no matter how unimportant or trivial they seem in the big picture. Many of us have always been a fan, though it’s not a requirement to be a “true fan,” despite the pretentious attitudes of some people. You could like one team, many teams, many players, many plays… but you like the sport, and that’s what draws you to it.

Growing up, I was a diehard baseball fan. I practically grew up at Shea Stadium (yes, it’s still weird that it’s Citifield all these years later), buying cheap tickets in the low of the Mets lows and “sneaking” down from the loge section to catch a better glimpse of whichever scrubs the Wilpons threw together. The Mets broke my heart over and over, but I was a fan of the game and, moreso, what it meant to me. Read More→

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Four questions for this week’s mailbag. As always, use the mailbag feature on the right to send us questions throughout the week.

Stepan (Photo by Joel Auerbach/Getty Images)

Q: What do you think Derek Stepan is worth? What will he actually get?

I had to trim this question down a bit, since the email had about five paragraphs. I think Stepan is worth that $7 million number that seems to scare everyone. If you think about this in percent of cap, that’s 10% of the cap. I certainly think Stepan is worth that. As cap inflation, which is a real thing, rises, then the percent of that hit goes down. It may not go down much, but the alternative is to trade him? For what? This team is in win-now mode for good reason, and Stepan-Brassard-Hayes-Moore is a lot better than Brassard-Hayes-Lindberg-Moore.

In the end, I think he gets $6 million for his last two RFA years, matching what Ryan O’Reilly got in his last two RFA years, then an average of $7 million for the last four years. That averages out to $6.67 million per year. Well worth it for a 25 year old center, and the contract expires when he’s 31 years old.